Current location in this text. Enter a Perseus citation to go to another section or work. Full search
options are on the right side and top of the page.

As to the woods and groves
and that retirement which Aper denounced, they bring such delight to me that
I count among the chief enjoyments of poetry the fact that it is composed
not in the midst of bustle, or with a suitor sitting before one's door, or
amid the wretchedness and tears of
prisoners, but that the soul
withdraws herself to abodes of purity and innocence, and enjoys her holy
resting-place. Here eloquence had her earliest beginnings; here is her
inmost shrine. In such guise and beauty did she first charm mortals, and
steal into those virgin hearts which no vice had contaminated. Oracles spoke
under these conditions. As for the present money-getting and blood-stained
eloquence, its use is modern, its origin in corrupt manners, and, as you
said, Aper, it is a device to serve as a weapon. But the happy golden age,
to speak in our own poetic fashion, knew neither orators nor accusations,
while it abounded in poets and bards, men who could sing of good deeds, but
not defend evil actions. None enjoyed greater glory, or honours more august,
first with the gods, whose answers they published, and at whose feasts they
were present, as was commonly said, and then with the offspring of the gods
and with sacred kings, among whom, so we have understood, was not a single
pleader of causes, but an Orpheus, a Linus, and, if you care to dive into a
remoter age, an Apollo himself. Or, if you think all this too fabulous and
imaginary, at least you grant me that Homer has as much honour with
posterity as Demosthenes, and that the fame of Euripides or Sophocles is
bounded by a limit not narrower than that of Lysias or Hyperides. You will
find in our own day more who disparage Cicero's than Virgil's glory. Nor is
any production of Asinius or Messala so famous as Ovid's Medea or the
Thyestes of Varius.